With a four-plus year old in the midst, who can keep track of time?  Certainly not me.  I was supposed to report back here on something like September 28th about my current happiness project and here it is October 19th – whoops!  I’m still going and very pleased with the results.  Although it’s clear that I’m still in the early stages, because my feathers still get ruffled when I fall off in my practice.  My overall goal is to make happiness and contentment my norm rather than my practice results.  That said, I’m so grateful to be making some headway with Megan’s support, I feel that I’m truly on to something here.

Of course I’ve got a story about what’s been happening.  It was September 16th and I fell down my basement stairs.  It took a couple days for the initial inflammation to go down in order to confirm what I was instantly fearful of when it happened – I hit my tailbone nearly 24 years after the fateful knock sledding down the Amerman hill.  Here’s the amazingly good news, the thought of which has been putting a smile on my face every time I think of it since my moment of realization thanks to my chiropractor’s assessment:  I knocked my tailbone back into place.  When I broke my tailbone off my sacrum in 1991, I hit the very end of it and consequently it curled up inside my sacrum and off to one side (I can’t remember which one).  When I slammed it back into place I hit the top end, where it meets the sacrum and popped it right where it used to be when I was full of youth and hope for a good life.

(Note to self:  I will try not to extrapolate from this any theories which include me actually having good luck rather than bad luck.  I will do my best to remain neutral in my mindset.  Knowing that it is my extreme responses to life that can get me into trouble, remaining neutral is a strategy for staying happy and content and that’s what I’m after.  I will remember the wise Chinese farmer and stay the course of the neutral path.)

Note taken, the moment of transition from self pity to jubilation is pretty fun and happy-making.  The first couple days after my fall I was feeling all sorry for myself and put out by the fact that I’d have to put things like my happiness project on hold because all my limited free time would be going into tending to my injury and taking a really long time to do things like walk and get in and out of cars.  I still had to take time off for convalescing, and yet it is with much better prospects.  Even now, nearly five weeks later, I remain tender; but it’s great to know that my continued journey out of pain just got significantly shorter.

This happened to me once before when I had a painful ganglion cyst on my wrist that keep me from practicing most of the Pilates weight-bearing exercises for a year.  One day I was in dance class and my wrist collided with another dancer’s foot.  The physical pain was shocking and my pride was wounded; so much so that I left class immediately.  As I did I cursed the other dancer who didn’t even acknowledge our collision.  I sat down outside to collect myself, looked at my wrist and realized that the cyst was gone.  My resentment melted instantly and I left marveling at how remarkable it was that my body took a hit in the exact spot that it needed.

Honestly, I needed to write out these stories to remind myself today.  These days I feel in the midst of so much that feels overwhelming and even impossible when my mind is entertaining a funk.  It’s so good for me to remember the moments when perfection in all its realness and messiness was achieved.  I’m encouraged to think that every moment can be like that.  The wholeness of myself in this time space reality can be perfectly in line.  The perfect spot can get just what it needs.  And the beat goes on.  To me, that is the definition of happiness.

That and the fragrance of roasting tomatoes wafting in from the kitchen.  It’s time to go and make dinner……